Author Archives: Artist Profile
REVIEW | Michael Vale: Synchronicity and the theatre of the absurd
Michael Vale views colonialism as the elephant in the room when it comes to Australian history and Australian art. He observes that through a strange coincidence, or synchronicity, at the same time as the rise of the Gothic novel in Europe, the horrors imagined by the fiction writers were actually taking place in Australia through […]
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Tagged Australian Panting, Michael Vale, Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery, painting, Sasha Grishin, surrealism
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Issue 74
Editor’s Note Adam Ford’s cover essay on Warraba Weatherall positions the artist as a leading thinker of explication and visual experience, demonstrating how conceptual rigor and perceptual attentiveness productively coexist in contemporary art. Ford emphasises how Weatherall transforms archival and museological materials into active tools of inquiry, making the operations of power and omission legible […]
Poem | Explaining to a star the limits of human love
(for Michael Petchkovsky) You passed so quickly, it pulled the oxygen out of the air Drawing sorrow in behind you, like a myst Burning our lungs and causing our eyes to water We knew you were only taking the pain out And meant to return But the pain came back in without you […]
Posted in Poems
Tagged Alex Wisser, poem
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POEM | Nesting
i make it so that that every place i live is my home so i put my bed on the wall closest to the window, always furthest from the door, always i keep my window open, always except the one in this new place has been painted shut and […]
POEM | Trusina 1992-1993
after Gbenga Adesina The first text message was sent as the year closed. Before that, red-faced men stood and demanded translation. They wanted us to know: war is coming. We were hours away when the troops started sieging. In the village we played with our dolls, our fathers dealt cards and waited, our […]
ESSAY | Clean Edges and a Messy Studio: The Abstraction of Evie Adasal
Evie Adasal always wanted to paint, but she hesitated. “I graduated from art school in the ‘90s in photography and film,” she recalls. “When I was at TAFE, we had a really rough painting teacher, and she scared the shit out of me, so I thought I might stick to photography.” Years later, however, these […]
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Tagged abstract painting, abstraction, dopamine, Evie Adasal, Olsen Gallery, painting, Tai Mistuji
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Dale Frank | Food for the Soul
Frank was born in Singleton, New South Wales in 1959, and has been represented by Roslyn Oxley9 since 1982—a relationship that spans more than four decades and speaks to a sustained, uncompromising commitment. His work has been shown internationally since the 1980s, appearing at PS1 in New York, the 4th Biennale of Sydney, and the […]
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Tagged Chicken Soup, Dale Frank, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sarah Hetherington
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Olafur Eliasson | Spectacle and Substance
Standing before a luminous artificial sun or walking through rainfall inside a gallery, audiences might mistake spectacle for Olafur Eliasson’s primary concern. Yet, beneath the immediate visual drama lies a profound inquiry into the fundamental processes by which we perceive, interpret, and ultimately co-create the world around us. Olafur Eliasson: Presence, occupying GOMA’s ground floor spaces, […]
Posted in Reviews, Uncategorized
Tagged Brisbane, Gallery of Modern Art, olafur eliasson, Presence, Queensland Art Gallery, Sarah Hetherington
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REVIEW | Simone Slee: Light Time
The exhibition unfolds as an ode to Country, grounded in careful engagement with land and the ongoing presence of First Nations custodians. Slee returns, in a sense, to the material of the building itself, limestone sourced from the Berrin Mount Gambier region, embedding her work within the geological and cultural histories that underpin the site. […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Heide Museum of Modern Art, Melissa Keys, Simone Slee
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Enrico Taglietti: Architect for the People
Enrico Taglietti AO met his future wife Francesca (Franca) while they were both studying at the Politecnico di Milano (Milan Polytechnic), with Taglietti completing his degree in 1954. The couple shared the view that architecture and design were ultimately about people, and this was evident in their life and work. The salotto (parlour), for instance, […]
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Tagged Canberra Museum and Gallery, Enrico Taglietti, H. R. Hyatt-Johnston, Lunetta Restaurant, Taglietti Studio and Archive
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REVIEW | Mia Khin Boe: Walking About
Visually, the work unfolds like a page from a storybook. Figures appear to stand together, perhaps even holding hands. Boe’s work references the proclamation boards issued by George Arthur, Lieutenant Governor of Van Diemen’s Land, now Tasmania, between 1824 and 1836. His Proclamation to the Aborigines, 1828–30, used pictograms to communicate the idea of equality […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Australia’s Proclamation of the Aborigines 2026, Mia Boe, Mia Khin Boe, Sutton Gallery
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ESSAY | In Defence of Not Knowing: Être and the Art of Reflection
Genuine reflection, the quiet, unresolved, sometimes uncomfortable kind, feels increasingly rare. We are seldom invited to sit with what we do not yet understand. This is where art can still matter; not as decoration, not as therapy, and not as moral instruction; but as a rare site of inwardness. And yet, without inwardness, social / […]
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Tagged Dagmar Cyrulla, Lennox Street Gallery, reflection, Reminiscing, Revealing the Nude
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REVIEW: Westwood | Kawakubo: In Dialogue
As the title Westwood | Kawakubo suggests, the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) latest fashion exhibition plays to the idea that these two titans of contemporary design need no qualification. Their names are synonymous with the redefining of fashion over the past fifty years. Born a year apart, Vivienne Westwood (1941–2022) and Rei Kawakubo’s (1942–) […]
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Tagged designer clothing, fashion, Kawakubo, Laura Jocic, National Gallry of Victoria, NGV, Westwood
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REVIEW | Jen Valender: (It is Necessary to) Learn to Swim and Chaohui Xie: 18 Generations
Operating within a commercial framework yet not representing artists, Project8 allows for a greater sense of curatorial freedom, privileging thematic and carefully considered exhibitions over fixed affiliation. The expansive gallery, connected to Art @ Collins and the University of Melbourne, is curated by Kim Donaldson with Jiayang Zhang. Carrying the same title as the exhibition, […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Chaohui Xie, Jen Valender, Jiayang Zhang, Kim Donaldson, Project8 Gallery
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REVIEW | Abattoir Blues, Ron Mueck’s Sculpted Humanity
Ron Mueck’s shockingly alive sculptures hit us at many points along the pathway from birth to death. But it’s more than just mortal decay that concerns him. Mueck is interested in our spiritual life, the spark inside that won’t say die. It’s this soulfulness that drives his work into a struggle zone to understand who and […]
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Tagged Art Gallery of New South Wales, Art Gallery of NSW, Havoc 2025, Mark Mordue, Ron Mueck, Ron Mueck: Encounter, Woman with Shopping 2013
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REVIEW | Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light
Women Photographers 1900–1975: A Legacy of Light draws on more than 300 photographs and photomedia from the National Gallery of Victoria’s (NGV) collection and the affiliated Shaw Research Library. The Gallery’s curator Maggie Finch shapes material that is disparate in subject, technique, and intention into a coherent passage through photographic modernity. Viewers are reasonably asked […]
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Tagged National Gallery of Victoria, NGV, Peter McKay, photography, Women Photographers 1900-1975
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Issue 73
Editor’s Note In this issue there is a moving tribute to William Robinson AO who died in August. Back in 2017 William appeared on the cover of Artist Profile issue 41. He was surprised to be asked. Louise Martin-Chew interviewed William then and she has written the tribute for him now. There are many […]
Posted in Back Issues
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REVIEW: Tina Stefanou | Motet Fail
Motet Fail, 2026, reshapes Artist Run Initiative, West Space into an immersive backgammon board that operates as a site of reflection, encounter, and quiet concert. Tina Stefanou collaborated with Romanie Harper and Aldo Bilotta on the design and construction of the set and objects for Motet Fail, and with West Space director and curator Joanna […]
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Tagged Amélie Blanc, Joanna Kitto, Kosta Stefanou, Motet Fail 2026, Tina Stefanou, Wake for Horses 2021, West Space
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Review: Janet Koongotema
Carvings have been made for all time by Aurukun men. However, the more recent innovation to emerge from Aurukun are paintings. Vested in Country and experience of place, created by Aurukun women since 2008, they have drawn attention all over the world. Mavis Ngallametta (1944–2019) was exhibited from 2008, culminating in the Queensland Art Gallery […]
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Tagged Archer River Story, D Lan Galleries, Janet Koongotema, Louise Martin-Chew
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REVIEW: Lynda Draper’s Garden of Earthly Delights
A stone’s throw from the Illawarra escarpment at Campbelltown Arts Centre, the introduction to Draper’s ecosphere is a gathering of rainbow forms which, as an entrée, signal a period of transition and presents the most heterogenous arrangement in Glimmer. Cultural references are pluralist and synthesised across archetypal forms suggestive of Haniwa (Japanese unglazed clay mortuary […]
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Tagged Campbelltown Arts Centre, Emily Rolfe, Lynda Draper, Silversalt Photography, Una Rey
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REVIEW | The Volcanic Sublime: Werner Herzog’s The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katia and Maurice Krafft
In 1991, Maurice and Katia Krafft died during the Mount Unzen eruption on Japan’s island of Kyushu. Herzog’s documentary does meditate on their deaths and the notion of “impending doom,” but his concerns are the Kraffts’ humanity and their mythic imagery. He is not interested in the couple as people per se – their lives […]
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Tagged Aleks Wansbrough, Katia and Maurice Krafft, The Fire Within: A Requiem For Katia and Maurice Krafft, Werner Herzog
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REVIEW: The Talented Arrowsmith-Todd
Ruby Arrowsmith–Todd started attending the AGNSW film program in its early days as a self-educated, die-hard film fan, immersing herself in the cinematic sea of curator Robert Herbert’s vision. His film program ran for seventeen years before his untimely death. He would be a mentor for Arrowsmith-Todd, as well as a close friend, and under […]
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Tagged Art Gallery of New South Wales, H. R. Hyatt-Johnston, Ruby Arrowsmith–Todd, Sydney Cinémathèque
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PROFILE | Jim Lambie: The Language of the City
For most painters, tape has a prophylactic function. Stuck temporarily onto a canvas (or a doorframe, for that matter), tape protects what lies beneath or preserves the integrity of a newly painted edge or line. There are figurative muralists like the Tape Art duo Michael Townsend and Leah Smith; there have been moments in recent […]
Posted in Profiles
Tagged Jack Howard, Jim Lambie, Jim Lambie Cool Breeze 2026, Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Zobop
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